Every now and again there’s a rock band who are global superstars, who also happen to have world class musicians in the band. Eric Clapton and Cream, Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. But more often the great rock bands have a style and an ethic which is amalgamation of the players. But these players are not world class on their own. I’d put U2 in this category. The four Beatles make the Beatles. John Lennon was a brilliant genius and successful solo musician, but he couldn’t make girls scream on his own. He was different.
In startups what we are really building is a team and a culture. We talk about trying to find the best coder, the best UX guru, the ultimate growth hacker, but we should focus on is having the best culture where amazing collaborations can happen. If we want to be the best at something, we should probably be working on our own.